Thursday, October 28th at 6:00 p.m. exhibiting photographer JAMEY STILLINGS will be present to discuss his most recent body of work on the building of the the bridge at Hoover Dam, a project he began in March of 2009 (the bridge officially opened this week).

The exhibition will be on view from October 29th – January 23rd, 2011.

Juror: Natasha Egan, Associate Director and Curator of the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago.

Entries due: November 7, 2011

About the Juror: Natasha Egan, Associate Director and Curator of the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago. Egan has organized numerous exhibitions such as Alienation and Assimilation: Contemporary Images and Installations from the Republic of Korea; Consuming Nature; Manufactured Self; Made in China; Loaded Landscapes; The Edge of Intent and co-organized Reversed Images: Representations of Shanghai and Its Contemporary Material Culture. She also teaches in the photography and humanities departments at Columbia College Chicago.

Martine Fougeron began her Tête-à-Tête project in 2005 as a student at the International Center of Photography. In this series of intimate portraits of her two adolescent sons and their friends in New York and in France, she reveals the face-to-face engagement of the mother-photographer with the private world of two brothers and their teen tribe. Curator and critic Charlotte Cotton has called the project “one of the best biographical stories that photography has crafted in the 2000s.”

A Q&A session with the artist will follow the lecture.

The Camera Club of NY (CCNY) Lecture Series is presented in conjunction with SVA’s BFA Photography Department. Admission is free for SVA students and staff and CCNY member, $3 for other students, and $5 for the general public

NOTE: VIEW A LIVE WEBCAST of this event starting at approximately 7 p.m. CST on Tuesday, October 19. Not to be missed!

“The Lives and Work of Helmut and Alison Gernsheim”

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 19, 7 P.M. at the Harry Ransom Center, UT Austin

J. B. Colson, Professor Emeritus of Journalism and Fellow of the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, and Roy Flukinger, Ransom Center Senior Research Curator, discuss the lives and work of Helmut and Alison Gernsheim on Tuesday, October 19, at 7 p.m.

Drawn from the peerless collection of Helmut and Alison Gernsheim, the exhibition features masterpieces from photography’s first 150 years, alongside other images that, while lesser known, are integral to the medium’s history. Highlights include the first photograph (on permanent display at the Ransom Center); works by nineteenth-century masters such as Lewis Carroll, Julia Margaret Cameron, and Henry Peach Robinson; and iconic images by modern photographers such as Man Ray, Robert Capa, Edward Weston, and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

The book includes more than 125 full-page plates from the collection, accompanied by descriptions of each image’s place in the evolution of photography and within the collection. The catalog also traces the Gernsheims’ passion for collecting and their career as pioneering historians of photography, showing how their efforts significantly contributed to the acceptance of photography as a fine art and as a field worthy of intellectual study.

A book signing of The Gernsheim Collection follows.

Please be aware that the Ransom Center’s Charles Nelson Prothro Theater has limited seating. Line forms upon arrival of the first person, and doors open 30 minutes in advance.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 19th, 7 pm at the School of Visual Arts Auditorium (Photo ID required for entrance):

Please join Dear Dave, for a discussion with Susan Bright and Lyle Rexer on the release of Brights’ latest book,AUTO FOCUS: The Self Portrait in Contemporary Photography. A champagne reception will follow in the lobby where copies of the new book will be available for purchase and signing by Bright and other artists from the book.

Photographer and SVA faculty member Susan Bright will host a panel discussion featuring artists from her new book Auto Focus: The Self Portrait in Contemporary Photography (The Monacelli Press, 2010). Featuring the work of 75 contemporary photographers from around the world for whom self-portraiture is a central part of their work, the book explores issues of identity–national, sexual, racial, personal and artistic. Bright previously served as the assistant curator of photographs at the National Portrait Gallery in London and as acting director for the MA in Photography Program (Historic and Contemporary) at Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London and is the editor of Art Photography Now (Aperture, 2005). A book signing and reception will follow the discussion.

“Auto Focus,” features the work of 75 contemporary photographers from around the world for whom self-portraiture is a central part of their work. Issues of identity – national, sexual, racial, personal or artistic – are key to all the images featured in this book. “Auto Focus” offers an impressive survey of established and emerging contemporary photographers through the fascinating lens of self-portraiture. It features new work from emerging artists alongside photographs from more established big names, including Elina Brotherus, Nan Goldin, Catherine Opie, Jemima Stehli, Gillian Wearing and Erwin Wurm and includes more than 250 luscious images.

Susan Bright is a curator and writer. She has taught extensively in the UK and convened major international conferences and seminars on many aspects of art and photography. She was formerly Assistant Curator of Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery, Curator at the Association of Photographers and Acting Director for the MA Photography (Historic and Contemporary) at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London. She is also the author of Art Photography Now, which was published by Thames & Hudson in 2005. She currently lives and works in New York and teaches at the School of Visual Arts.

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Lyle Rexer was educated at the University of Michigan, Columbia University, and Merton College, Oxford University, which he attended as a Rhodes Scholar. He is the recipient of a 2008-9 grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation and is the author of several books, including The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography (2009); and How to Look at Outsider Art (2005). Rexer has also published many catalogue essays and contributes articles to a variety of publications, such as The New York Times, Modern Painters, Parkett, Tate, etc. and Aperture . As a curator, he has organized exhibitions in the United States and internationally, including “The Edge of Vision: Abstraction in Contemporary Photography,” and “Fernando Canovas,” at the Insitiut Valencia d’Art Modern. Rexer teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and is a columnist for Photograph magazine.

SVA is located at 333 West 23rd Street in NYC; this lecture is presented by SVA’s BFA Photography Department.

“Because I shoot portraits I can say that people are my first inspiration. They are intriguing, mysterious, and unsolved.”
—Michal Chelbin (from 9/4/2008 interview on Nymphoto)

“Michal Chelbin (born 1974, Haifa, Israel) started making pictures when she was 15, and honed her skills as a photographer during her compulsory service in the Israeli military. Following four years of study in Haifa, Chelbin began pursuing personal photographic projects and traveled in Russia, Ukraine, England, and Israel making the portraits that appear in Strangely Familiar (also the title of her 2008 Aperture monograph; The Black Eye, her new book, is forthcoming from Twin Palms). The body of work on display at the PRC this fall demonstrates Chelbin’s search for those displaying a “legendary” quality, which she describes as “a mix between odd and ordinary.”

Her photographs depict mostly young people who carry their livelihoods with them, often in the very form or function of their bodies. Her subjects are members of itinerant companies— dancers, acrobats, and carnival attractions—and athletes. Chelbin’s work, typically made of individuals in off-stage repose, reflects both the intensity of their pursuits and the fatigue engendered by being constantly on the road and almost always on display. Her photographs are staged, in the sense of being made by arrangement between artists and subject, but not manipulated or otherwise altered post-exposure.